Bob Heisse: MyHealthIllinois.com debuts in time for community conversation on health

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The State Journal-Register

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Posted Feb. 9, 2014 at 1:07 AM

Posted Feb. 9, 2014 at 1:07 AM

Sangamon County’s surprisingly poor showing in the County Health Rankings program should be a call to action for improvements.

The first step takes place Monday at 6 p.m. at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in downtown Springfield. Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy director of the County Health Rankings, a program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will speak.

Sangamon ranks 80th out of 102 counties in Illinois, according to the most recent report. Van Dijk will discuss issues highlighted by the data and how our community might be able to work together to improve overall health.

How does Sangamon compare to other counties in various health and lifestyle categories? See a complete county-by-county database on our new health care website, MyHealthIllinois.com, accessed from sj-r.com.

This website, a few months in the making, is debuting this weekend. It’s rich in national, state and local health care news from various sources, updated 24/7, and has some unique features to put Springfield’s growing medical community in the spotlight.

Visit and make your way around when you have time. MyHealthIllinois.com includes a section on the Affordable Care Act with 24/7 news and social media updates and a place for readers to share their experiences in the Marketplace.

It also will include news and commentary from the SJ-R and our sister papers throughout Illinois, community blogs, resource directories, a Meet the Health Care Professional section and much more.

Readers may remember the SJ-R’s Be Healthy Springfield site a few years ago. This one is the 2014 version, robust with news content that includes reports from Kaiser News Service, The Washington Post and The Associated Press and new features.

MyHealthIllinois.com comes at the right time for the County Health Rankings discussion that follows tomorrow’s public forum. Too often survey findings are presented, reported in the media and then left on paper.

This community’s collective health is too important to pass over.

We’ll post full video of the forum at the Hoogland to the website, giving everyone a chance to view it and perhaps contribute to the ideas presented.

We encourage letters to the editor suggesting responses to the findings and ways the community can work together to improve health factors. All will be posted to MyHealthIllinois.com.

Enjoy this new site and let us know what you think about it. Have an idea for a blog or content? Send me a note.

Sign up for digital access

Our carriers again did an outstanding job during last week’s snowstorm, but we made our electronic edition free on Wednesday to make sure all subscribers could read the paper.

Page 2 of 2 - You may have had your first look at the e-edition, and we hope you enjoyed it.

Here’s a reminder that any print subscriber can sign up for unlimited website reading and the electronic edition at no additional charge. To do that, just hit the digital access link next to the weather at the top of our home page. Then create your free account.

This is a great time to take advantage of this, if you’ve yet to do it. The electronic edition is convenient, particularly when traveling.

And you’ll need unlimited digital access if you want to spend more time on our website or on MyHealthIllinois.com.

Moving to DNR

Chris Young created Prairie State Outdoors in print and online and has made it shine in the past year with wonderful storytelling and visuals.

His talents brought the beauty of nature and the outdoors to readers from all over Illinois, and his new job will keep him doing that.

Young is leaving The State Journal-Register on Friday for a job in communications at the state Department of Natural Resources.

“I’m looking forward to trying something new, and becoming more directly involved in conservation efforts statewide,” Young said. “The State Journal-Register has been my home for 24 years, and it is not easy to leave. I have been very fortunate to have the support of so many people, both on the newspaper’s staff and among its readers.”

No doubt Young’s talents will help DNR interest many Illinois residents to enjoy the state’s parks and gems of nature.

Outdoors coverage will be rolled into the sports section after Friday’s Prairie State Outdoors. Young can be reached at chris.young@sj-r.com if you’d like to join me in wishing him well.

Thanks for reading us and let me know what you think about anything in The State Journal- Register or sj-r.com.

Executive Editor Bob Heisse can be reached at 788-1505 or bob.heisse@sj-r.com. Read his “From the Editor” blog.